Tip #329 On How To Avoid Becoming The Crazy Cat Lady

Do not Google Image search "pile of kittens".

Viva Vibrator

You've all seen the Viagra commercials I assume? Bunch of middle-aged dudes sitting around with their guitars, jamming in someone's garage, singing a parody of "Viva Las Vegas"? In the newer one, they've doubled in number and moved into a recording studio, ostensibly to lay down tracks for "Viva Viagra". In all of them they are smiling smiles of great joyness. I ask you, who is the advertising genius who thought this up?

REAL MEN DON'T ACT LIKE THIS. And I don't mean that as in "No macho guy's guy would behave in such a manner", I mean it as in "Human males regardless of their relative masculinity or effeminateness don't sit around singing to each other about erectile dysfunction". It's just not something you discuss with an entire roomful of people. Nor is it something you write songs about. It is especially not something you record songs about. Regardless of the quality of instrumentation, no such song will ever be aired on Casey's Top 40, I promise.

And another thing, I would not sleep with any of those people. It's not because they need Viagra and it's not because of their age relative to mine. It is because sitting around merrily singing about Viagra makes them look like a bunch of goofball idiots, and goofball idiots are not attractive (think Tom Greene. See?). It's also likely to end any such budding musical career through cause and effect:

Sing asinine song about Viagra --->Look ridiculous--->Become completely unattractive--->No one will sleep with you--->No need for Viagra--->Nothing to sing about

Just a little feedback from someone in the secondary target group for this product.

Even Mr. Rogers Would Be Aggravated

The occupants of my six flat building are as follows: Nice couple with annoying dog, nice lady with cat, nice girls who take a lot of baths in the jacuzzi tub, nice couple with no dog, the bartender and me, and Crazy Next Door. It's a miracle, really, that I've managed to get this far into my lease without blogging about Crazy Next Door.

Crazy Next Door is a petite, probably alcoholic (based on the case of Old Style she hauls up three flights of stairs daily), apparently independently wealthy (based on the food she has delivered daily, also the fact that no one has ever seen her go to a job) woman who smells like a walking ashtray and vacillates between creepy and weird, mean and weird, and drunken psycho. In the summer she enjoys browning her already crispy leather skin on the back porch, to the bartender's horror. In the winter, she tends to favor passing out drunk while forgetting to let her animals inside. All year round she entertains a handful of questionable friends.

A while back I had ordered a shirt and a bracelet from the internets because they were on sale and I hate all my clothes. I tracked my shipment with my handy FedEx tracking number, and on March 5th my package was deemed delivered. Except when I got home there was nothing there. I called FedEx, who again told me I had it even though I didn't have it. FedEx did their best to look for it on their end but couldn't find it. A week passed. Deeming the package lost I filed a claim with FedEx and waited. This past Tuesday I came home from work to find a Macy's bag hanging on my doorknob. It contained the skirt and bracelet I had ordered, which were without their original packaging and now reeked of smoke. While I went around lamenting the incompetence of FedEx, here Crazy had stolen my package, opened it, kept it for THREE WEEKS and then attempted to anonymously return it without bothering to try to mask her scent. And most disturbing of all, no one in the building was surprised.

No one was surprised, of course, because previous to this she had:

• left a bag of dog shit at couple with annoying dog's back door. The shit was from her dog not theirs;
• gotten caught by the building engineer throwing her garbage into the yard from her third floor porch;
• deliberately or accidentally poured a bottle of whiskey out on the porch, which ran down to the two proches below it and cause our entire backyard to smell like Maker's Mark for a week;
• yelled at couple with no dog when one of HER friends wandered into THEIR apartment because they'd forgotten to lock the door;
• accused the agent and me of spying on her when I opened the door so he could leave and she happened to be standing in the hallway;
• etc. etc.

I look forward to wearing my new clothes once they've been fumigated and disinfected.

Amberance Is Not A Nice Person

Greenpeace volunteer soliciting people on the street: It will only take 60 seconds to help save the trees.
Me (without breaking stride): I hate trees.

Tiny Tiny Update

Ladies and germs, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Jonah, my new tiny tiny (stuffed) whale:

This is, I think, the closest I will ever get to my dream of a real tiny tiny whale. As you can see, he fits perfectly in my hand, and he even has his tail turned up just the way I like it. I do wonder why Ty, Inc. didn't find it important to sew a dorsal fin on him, but I suppose since he won't actually be doing any swimming he'll be fine without it. I am filled with near-joy.

It's the Little Things In Life...

Sea World is fucking with me.

You know how I said I will suddenly declare that I want something I can't have, either because it's not at all practical or (more likely) doesn't exist? Yeah. Well. I am driving the agent crazy, but it is not my fault this time.

Sea World has this new commercial out (which I can't seem to find anywhere on the intertubes otherwise I would link to it so you could see exactly what I'm talking about) in which, I've concluded, they are deliberately fucking with me. What it does is to play around with reality, like you see dolphins swimming through the loops of a roller coaster and the sizes of things are all out of proportion and what not. It's the disproportion thing that's doing it to me. Right about the middle of the commercial, there is a shot of a little girl. She holding out her hand palm up in front of her and sitting on her hand is a tiny, tiny killer whale. As if this is not cute enough, the whale then proceeds to cheerfully lift its little tail up in the air behind it to the delight of the little girl (and more importantly me) before the commercial moves on to the next shot.

I WANT ONE.

And I have not shut up about it since I first saw it. It's a huge conundrum. I can't have one because they don't exist, but it is obvious that I can't live without one. At first I wanted a whole menagerie of tiny tiny animals. "Animals are so much cuter in miniature," I told the agent. "If they existed, I would get a tiny tiny elephant, the size of a medium dog and it would follow me around the house and make little trumpet sounds with its trunk when I came home...oh! And also a tiny tiny rhino, like a cat sized rhino. Yeah, a cat sized rhino would be a perfect rhino. But I would love my tiny tiny whale the best."

I elaborated on my plans for the whale. "See, cause they're mammals you know. And they breathe air. So as long as I kept him wet I could take him out of his tank and carry him around. We could watch tv together, or I could carry him into the kitchen and feed him...what do whales eat? Tiny tiny fish I guess. I could feed him tiny tiny fish and ooo you know what else? If they made miniature seals I could feed him those too! Killer whales love to eat seals. Who is that guy that the whale ate in the bible? Jonah. That's what I would name him. Jonah." I frequently demonstrate how his little tail would flip up when I held him in my hand.

Last night, right in the middle of Die Hard, I turned to the agent with a pressing question. "Do you think, if I did have a tiny tiny whale, (here he rolled his eyes) I would be disappointed if he didn't do the tail thing?"


The agent says he dates me because I am always entertaining*. Hmm.


*Just think how much more entertaining I could be if I had a tiny tiny whale!

Meat and More Meat

Today is the long awaited Steak and Blow Job Day. Treat your man to some filetio.



P.S. I am extremely pleased with myself for coming up with filetio. No one else I've checked with thinks this is even remotely funny.

Cookie Proofs

The agent: I don't know what I should have for dinner.
Me: Cookies! You should have Girl Scout Cookies!
The agent: Cookies are not dinner.
Me: Cookies are too dinner!
The agent: No.
Me: Listen. Tagalongs are made with peanut butter. And peanut butter comes from peanuts. Peanuts have tons of protein, just like meat. Therefore, Girl Scout cookies count as meat. Girl Scout cookies are dinner.
The agent: Girl Scout cookies do not count as meat.
Me: They do! Girl Scout cookies are meat!
The agent: Maybe Girl Scout cookies are made of soylent green, which would mean they are really made out of people.
Me: People are also filled with protein. So they would still count as meat.

The whole thing seemed perfectly obvious to me.

The Cookie Follies

It's that time of year again. The time that causes me much anxiety as well as the time that makes me both broke and fat. The little green demons are at it again. Yep, you guessed it: it's Girl Scout Cookie time.

It is clear to me that the Girl Scouts are secretly adding MSG or cocaine or some other highly addictive substance to their cookies, as evidenced by the fact that I can't stop eating them. Regular Bizzybiz readers will recall that I've encountered this problem before. When I mentioned my complete lack of self control in regards to Girl Scout cookies to MrSteve, he told me about a thing called drunkorexia, by which people (I'm assuming mostly the vagina kind) starve themselves in order that they can "afford" the calories in alcohol. He jokingly (I think) suggested I might adapt this unhealthy, malnourishing behavior to my Girl Scout cookie problem, ergo Cookierexia. I, of course, thought this was brilliant.

As it turned out I almost didn't have to. Last year, I discovered a website which listed the places and times Girl Scout cookies would be for sale in and around the city of Chicago. It's a great idea except for one small problem: Girl Scouts are apparently enormous fucking liars. On Saturday I wrote down four places near my home that the list claimed had my precious cookie treasure for sale and went to all of them to find ABSOLUTELY NO GIRL SCOUT COOKIES. I was heartbroken. The next day the agent and I tried again. I did find a little Scout sitting on the side walk outside of Trader Joe's, who told me the cookies she had available were: Trefoils and some shit lemony things (ok, she didn't say "shit lemony things" but honestly, ew). No Tagalongs, no Samoas, not even any Thin Mints. Just as I was about to throw myself off a cliff into the pit of despair, the agent found some Girl Scouts selling the appropriate cookies at a school near his office and I was saved.

My cookies will finally arrive tonight. I can't wait to get home and fix. I really and truly NEED the cookies now, as I'm pretty sure I'm now hypoglycemic from the cookierexia. It is obvious that they are now a nutritional necessity.

I Am Only Slightly More Hip Than MrSteve

Some strangers in Tai's are playing horrible horrible pop/dance music on the jukebox. MrSteve and I eye each other, dismayed.

MrSteve: I feel like I should break a move, but I'm not sure how it would go over.

Me: (confused) Do you mean...."bust a move?"

MrSteve: Oh yeah! That's it!

Poetry Corner

A little something I penned while writing a shopping list this morning, for which I am entirely too pleased with myself to justify:


Roses are red
Violets are blue
In Soviet Russia
Flower grows YOU!

You've Got Crap!

Either word has gone around that I am in dire need of some kind of existential help, or the grown ups in my life are deliberately trying to make me crazy.

There has recently been a spate of annoying e-mail forwards hitting my inbox from what are otherwise normal, intelligent adults in their 50s and 60s. You remember these - you used to get them about 10-15 years ago when e-mail was, you know, new. They contain things like "Hey look! I made you a picture of an angel out of ampersands! Aren't I clever? Don't you think everyone you know should have one too? If you send this to your entire address book, Ampersand Angel will send you blessings for the rest of your life! But if you delete it you will ROT IN ETERNAL HELLFIRE!" Some are more specific: "One time some anonymous, unverifiable person didn't forward this e-mail full of pictures of puppies dress up in snowsuits, and later that same day they were dismembered alive by a pack of homicidal gypsies. Don't let this happen to you."

Stop it. I mean it. Stopstopstopstopstop. I thought we had collectively outgrown this annoying habit. Even accounting for the possibility that maybe these people have just now discovered this cutting edge technology that is electronic mail there is still no excuse. These are GROWN PEOPLE, old enough to realize that failing to send out horribly stupid chain mail is not going to cause a catastrophic outcome somewhere else in your life. As far as the little angels that want to shower me with celestial blessings, I think this would be entirely negated by the principle of "Do Unto Others". If you wouldn't want your inbox cluttered with crap, it would behoove you to refrain from sending it to others. No soup blessings for you.

R.I.P. Todd Kawaguchi

Hey, dumbass. We miss you already. Tai's won't be the same without you.

Eleven Degrees Farenheit = ....

... not nearly enough degrees.

I can't feel my face.

Only One Month Until SBJ Day!

"Why are you here?" seemed to be the $64,000 question at Tai's on Thursday night. Because it was Valentine's Day, see, and I have a boyfriend this year. I attempted to justify myself to MrSteve. "You know how much energy it takes for you to spend four hours with me?" I asked. "[The agent] just spent four entire days with me in Florida. He could use the break."

This seemed to appease him (he agreed that four hours in my company is draining indeed) but the truth is that this has nothing to do with it. The real reason is that I hate Valentine's Day and I fail to see why having a boyfriend should affect my overall opinion. OK, hate may be a strong word. It's just that I can't bring myself to believe that there should be one magic day on which your love must be declared in embarrassingly florid terms lest you sign yourself up for Certain Doom. If I fail to show my love an overwhelming majority of the time, I doubt some dead plants and a cardboard box filled with heart-shaped confections will be the magic relationship fixing elixir. (Except for chocolate covered strawberries from Malley's in Cleveland. Those can fix anything.) I find it more satisfying to celebrate the St. Valentine's Day Massacre because a) that's how Valentine's Day tends to make the lonely single people feel and b) that really was a pretty badass piece of trickery.

Having said that, I did dye the rice pink when the agent came over for dinner on Friday night.

Two Girls, One Chat

me: i wish i was a muppet
H-town: doesn't that really just mean you want a hand in your ass?
me: *hangs head in shame* yes
H-town: Ah, now I know what that tingling is - it's the knowledge that this is going to be blogged
me: i said the same thing to MrSteve last week and he said "My dear, you ARE a muppet"
H-town: Really, I just like making "hand in the ass" references
me: who doesn't?
H-town: proctologists?
H-town: zing!
me: hand in the ass is a masterpiece of comedy
H-town: *rimshot*
H-town: hahaha, rimshot
H-town: I AM ON A ROLL
me: i am on a bagel
H-town: zing!
H-town: oh yeah, folks, we'll be here all week
me: try the veal

My Tonton Will Die Before I Reach the First Marker

"You're going to have a rough commute today," announced the bartender this morning. I blew this off and attempted to roll over and go back to sleep. (It turns out I couldn't move, because Kristen was sitting on top of me like a conquering explorer with a look on her face like she was going to yell "I claim this mountain for the United States!" and plant a flag in my hip.) It had snowed all night overnight and was still snowing. I wasn't concerned. After all, I take the train to work like a sane person so how bad could it be? It is this kind of thinking that causes one to fail at life.

In fact, it could be very bad. My four block walk to the train took me 20 minutes. This is because there was a foot of snow on the ground and it was too early for anyone to have shoveled. Also when I got to the train I was exhausted and sweating from the effort. I figure, who needs an exercise plan when you can just walk in feet of snow with a backpack? I reasoned that if I had to do this every day I'd be as skinny as Twiggy. Except for my thighs which would be more like Barbaro (pre glue factory).

I hate snow.

My Hair is Sometimes Misleading

Co-worker: So what's happening?
me: Very little. I lead a boring life.
Co-worker: Yeah right.
me: No, I'm serious! I don't do anything, ever.
Co-worker: Yeah, but you don't do it with flair.

It's Still 'Happy Birthday' To Me

So I have been 30 for nearly two weeks now. I am now officially too old to be trusted. I'm both old enough to know better and too old for this shit.

I was having trouble finding inspiration for my 30th birthday recap post. "You know why?" said my co-worker, BrownsFan. "It's because if you blog about it, then it must be over. You can't blog about it because you'd have to admit that it wasn't your birthday anymore. You can't write about it. You'll never be able to. You'll never blog again."

"Hmm. Well," I replied, "I'm certainly blogging that."

Amberance: Dead Sexy

MrSteve: Oh! Vampira died!
Me: Who?
MrSteve: Maila Nurmi.
Me: [blank stare]
MrSteve: Did you see 'Ed Wood'?
Me: No.
MrSteve: Oh. She was one of his favorite actresses. She played a vampire. A vampire with an outfit cut down the front to her waist.
Me: Well if I was a vampire, I'd wear an outfit cut down to my waist. Because, realistically, once you're the undead, who do you have to be modest for?